海角大神

On Monday, more than 33 years after he was shot during the attempted assassination of President Reagan on March 30, 1981, former White House Press Secretary James Brady passed away. Yesterday, a Virginia medical examiner classified Brady鈥檚 death as a homicide, setting up the possibility that John Hinckley Jr, currently still hospitalized at St. Elizabeth鈥檚 Hospital, could be charged with his murder.

The New York Times reports:

Off the top, it鈥檚 worth noting here that the fact that Brady鈥檚 death has been ruled a homicide does not necessarily mean that criminal charges will be brought in his death. As a general rule, when any person dies, the cause of their death must be noted on the official records that result in the creation of a Death Certificate and, in the end, there are only a limited number of causes of death. That cause of death could be natural causes, such as disease, accident, suicide, or homicide, which is broadly defined as 鈥渢he killing of a human being due to the act or omission of another.鈥� There are many forms of homicide, some of which aren鈥檛 necessarily crimes, such as justifiable crimes. In any case, though, in the case of Brady鈥檚 death if there is medical evidence that his ultimate cause of death can ultimately tied to the injuries he suffered as a result of the shooting on March 30, 1981, then it was entirely proper for his death to be classified as a homicide. Ultimately, it is as much a statistical classification as anything else, but of course that classification could have legal implications depending on how prosecutors in the District of Columbia choose to act.

Labeling Brady鈥檚 death a homicide, of course, has implications far beyond the question of how his death in 2014 will be classified in the statistical records. The question now is whether John Hinckley, Jr, who has been hospitalized at St. Elizabeth鈥檚 Hospital in the District for three decades since he was found not guilty by reason of insanity, could be charged with his murder 33 years after the act that is allegedly the cause of Brady鈥檚 death. Given the fact that there is no statute of limitations for murder, the fact that three decades has passed is not a bar to bringing charges itself. However, there are several reasons why any murder charges against Hinckley at this point in time would be legally tenuous and, ultimately, could end up with the same result as that his acquittal three decades ago.

The original 13 count indictment against Hinckley in Federal Court, for example, included attempted murder charges under both federal and District of Columbia law for the shootings of President Reagan, Metropolitan Police Department Officer聽Thomas Delahanty, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy, and Brady.(See聽this article from the Toledo Blade from August 25, 1981, and this 海角大神 Science Monitor article聽from the same day.) He was acquitted on all of these charges based on the psychiatric evidence that was presented in court. While double jeopardy would not, in theory, bar bringing murder charges even though Hinckley was acquitted of the attempted murder of the same person since these are different offenses, one would imagine that Hinckley鈥檚 defense would clearly raise this argument before trial.

More importantly, though, even if the prosecution were able to get beyond the double jeopardy issue, it is hard to see how they鈥檇 be able to avoid the same outcome that they ended up with 32 years ago. While the law has changed significantly since the Hinckley verdict regarding what a defendant must prove in order to establish legal insanity at trial, it seems clear that the law that would apply in a trial today for the murder of James Brady would be the law as it existed in 1982 when Hinckley was on trial. Whether Hinckley was tried before a jury or by a judge, that trier of fact would be required to apply the law as it existed back then, which was much more favorable to defendants than it is today. Additionally, the evidence that the trier of fact would be required to consider in this regard would be regarding Hinckley鈥檚 mental state at the time of the shootings, not his mental state today, which is apparently vastly improved according to recent evaluations by the doctors treating him. If Hinckley was not guilty by reason of insanity based on that law and that evidence 32 years ago, then it strikes me that there鈥檚 no reason to think that he shouldn鈥檛 be found not guilty by reason of insanity today, if he were to be charged with Brady鈥檚 murder.

In addition to the mental health issues, prosecutors could also be faced with y problems in trying to link the March 1981 shooting with Brady鈥檚 death some 401 months later. The Medical Examiner鈥檚 determination that Brady鈥檚 death is a homicide does not end the legal question of just how one can tie the events of March 1981 to Brady鈥檚 death. Typically, one only sees murder charges filed at a late date like this in cases where someone had been in a coma for a long period of time after being assaulted and then died as a result of their injuries. That didn鈥檛 happen in Brady鈥檚 case. He was shot some three decades ago, and while he did have to deal with those injuries for the next three decades, it may be a long shot to try to hold Hinckley legally responsible for his death on Monday.

Ultimately, the question of whether or not murder charges are brought will be in the hands of the US attorney in Washington, and the District鈥檚 attorney general. As things stand right now, though, it seems as though such charges would be on legally tenuous grounds.

Doug Mataconis appears on the Outside the Beltway blog at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/.